"Oh, you don't want to do that," Edging an elbow about his. "Orlesians are dreadful."

Richard speaks, if one may call it speech — there are things that hiss in dreams, that wind through paths of Fade. Few of them own tongues, but every night, you can listen.

You can grow used to anything.

He listens, and it isn't casual; not really. The tension in his hands draws them up new, knuckles lifted with a degree of care not present about the apple. And something in the staff slithers, reaches for itself.